Climate change triggering national security threats

Climate change will likely lead to more frequent extreme weather events as well as droughts and floods, triggering serious social and political disruption that poses a potential threat to U.S. national security, a National Research Council report shows.

“National security decision makers do not like surprises and expect the intelligence community to provide sufficient warning to make it possible to avoid, ameliorate or alter the undesired consequences of emerging developments,” says the report, released Friday. “Fundamental knowledge of climate dynamics indicates that many types of extreme climate events are likely to become more frequent, even though we do not know enough to predict which extreme events will occur where or when.”

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Whether a specific event can be attributed to human-caused climate change or natural variations is irrelevant from a national security standpoint, it says. What matters is that those events are becoming more common, largely because of human activity’s contributions to climate change.

Though unpredictable weather events are increasingly damaging and could ultimately prove a security risk by requiring international response efforts, the report is more concerned with long-term disruptions to critical resources and supply chains.

The oil trade provides an example of a global market that is heavily integrated and could be disrupted easily by climate change events.

“Tropical storms and the increased storm surges that result from sea-level rise and, in some cases, land subsidence can disrupt production, refining and transport of petroleum,” the report says. “In addition, because offshore oil and gas platforms are generally not designed to accommodate a permanent rise in mean sea level, climate-related sea-level rise would disrupt production.”

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and Gustav and Ike in 2008 caused global oil spikes after disrupting production, refining and transportation, the report notes.

The report, conducted at the request of the U.S. intelligence community, was set to be released earlier, but it was delayed by Hurricane Sandy.

The U.S intelligence community should support research efforts taking place at agencies across the government that would help project more accurate climate forecasts, particularly for areas of vulnerability and adaptation methods.

National security analysis will have to draw on climate science, political concerns and social science.

“An important need is to integrate the social science of natural disasters and disaster response with other forms of analysis,” the report says.

“This body of knowledge is particularly important for assessing the security consequences of climate change because disruptive climate events will typically be perceived and responded to as natural disasters.”

The U.S. needs to set up a “whole-of-government strategy for monitoring threats connected to climate change,” the report concludes.

“The intelligence community presumably already uses an analogous process to consider the ability of foreign governments and societies to withstand various kinds of social and political stresses,” the report says. “The results of stress tests would inform national security decision makers about places that are at risk of becoming security concerns as a result of climate events and could be used by the U.S. government or international aid agencies to target high-risk places for efforts to reduce susceptibilities or to improve coping, response and recovery capacities.”

Readers' Comments (8)

For the best account of the Obama Administration's perspective on climate change, check out the book, Obama Green: Environmental Leadership of President Obama, by noted environmentalist, David B. Bancroft.

We need a strong Republican scientific approach to global warming, as follows...

GOD IS TELLING US TO REPENT!

THERE IS NO GLOBAL-WARMING IN THE REPUBLICAN BELIEF SYSTEM! Increasing perturbations of temperature and climate are NOT possible! So obviously our current weather is the wrath of God! WHY?

Maybe... IT'S PAUL RYAN'S IMMORAL BUDGET! Jesus spoke in Matthew 25:40, “Truly I tell you, whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do for ME" But Paul Ryan sayeth the opposite!

Or... GOD WANTS ALL HIS CHILDREN COVERED BY OBAMACARE!

Or… AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY HAS BECOME COMPLETELY SELF-CENTERED! Instead of “Faith, Hope and Charity, and the greatest of these is Charity,” these Christian Pharisees profess “ME, ME, ME, I’M SAVED!”

Now here is a burst of pseudo - science for you. When did weather become climate? Never. But there is a catastrophe looming ahead - US Government policy to combat global warming. New regulations will strangle our domestic oil, gas and coal industries while Obama blocks Keystone XL permanently, so cheap Canadian oil goes to China. Energy costs will skyrocket, more than a million jobs will be lost, as will the potential tax revenues from that energy production and those jobs, poor and middle class Americans will pay much more to heat and light their homes and drive their cars so that they won't be able to save any money or spend it on a better life, and our GDP growth will stay below 2% if not actually drop into a double dip recession. Goodbye American dream.

Climate crisis is real all right, really not a crisis and just a new Reefer Madness. *In all of the debates Obama hadn’t planned to mention climate change once. *Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses. *Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations. *Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier. *Canada’s voters had already killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially you fear mongers and the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit). Meanwhile, the entire world of SCIENCE, lazy copy and paste news editors and obedient journalists, had condemned our kids to the greenhouse gas ovens of an exaggerated "crisis" and had allowed bank-funded and corporate-run “CARBON TRADING STOCK MARKETS” to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 26 years of insane attempts at climate CONTROL. Not one single IPCC warning over the last 26 years of studying “effects” not causes isn’t peppered with “maybes”. Help my house could be on fire maybe? They say we could be at the brink of no return yet the lab coats can’t say it “WILL” happen? And yes, science did give us pesticides as well. Science is not truth, it is politics all the way and the fact that the millions in the global scientific community are not acting like their kids are doomed as well proves they exaggerated.

Climate crisis is real all right, really not a crisis and just a new Reefer Madness. *In all of the debates Obama hadn’t planned to mention climate change once. *Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses. *Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations. *Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier. *Canada’s voters had already killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially you fear mongers and the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit). Meanwhile, the entire world of SCIENCE, lazy copy and paste news editors and obedient journalists, had condemned our kids to the greenhouse gas ovens of an exaggerated "crisis" and had allowed bank-funded and corporate-run “CARBON TRADING STOCK MARKETS” to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 26 years of insane attempts at climate CONTROL. Not one single IPCC warning over the last 26 years of studying “effects” not causes isn’t peppered with “maybes”. Help my house could be on fire maybe? They say we could be at the brink of no return yet the lab coats can’t say it “WILL” happen? And yes, science did give us pesticides as well. Science is not truth, it is politics all the way and the fact that the millions in the global scientific community are not acting like their kids are doomed as well proves they exaggerated.

The AGW models incorporated a warming Atlantic but totally forgot to include a cooling Pacific.

As the Atlantic warms and the Pacific cools, climate is going to change which will affect storm tracks. Remember, the US has been in a hurricane *DROUGHT* for over a decade or more. It seems that we are now beginning to move back into a more *traditional* hurricane track which will impact the US more often.

Again, none of this has to do with AGW but it *will* require the US to change significantly.

So what?

The drought of the 20's and 30's in the Central Plains required the US to drastically change as well. If we return to weather patterns like we had then, we are going to have to change even more.